


Ange De La Mort

by bai_marionette



Category: Hazbin Hotel (Web Series)
Genre: Ballet Dancer Angel Dust, Demisexual Alastor, Graphic Description of Corpses, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Childhood Abuse, Trans Angel Dust (Hazbin Hotel), Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:27:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22330300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bai_marionette/pseuds/bai_marionette
Summary: If you know my sins, will you still trust me?If I let you in, will you still love me?.The first kill is always the hardest, they knew. For Angel, it was only the beginning.
Relationships: Alastor/Angel Dust (Hazbin Hotel)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 70
Collections: Writers of Hell





	Ange De La Mort

**Author's Note:**

> thank you @ the radiodust discord, y’all are incredible, and special thanks @ ono, you’re the best!! 💋

_Makes my head pirouette_  
_More than I won't be willing to confess_

:::

It had started as an innocent question at first. Something tossed at the spider when he had given an offhand account of some performance that he had done some time ago, he could barely remember now, but here he was. Standing in a makeshift studio in the hotel, looking at himself in the mirror and almost feeling foreign in his own skin. He had pulled his hair back into a bun to keep from his eyes and done his makeup softer. He did not have the faintest memory of when, how and why he had kept these old leotards but he had found tights that he found agreeable with his feet and now he was standing there- and he didn’t know if he could go through with it after all.

“How long were you in ballet?”

Angel raised his left leg slowly, steadily until it was perpendicular to his waist, then braced it over the flat bar, releasing a slow even breath. He opened his eyes, face expressionless in the mirror. Then he frowned, “Ma wanted me and Molly perfect before fifteen. Not sure if I was four or five, but whichever was earlier. Anyways,” he licked over his lips, lower set of arms braced over his middle while his upper arms crossed over his chest. He slowly brought his leg down, flattening his foot and turning it slightly out to his right. Towards Alastor.

Angel remembered his mother beating this routine into his head early, often physically taking a hand to the back of his head until he got it right. His movements felt automatic and robotic, poised and effortless, done from muscle memory alone and it left Angel’s brain to wander. He didn’t like it. Doing this all over again felt tortuous without any act of physical harm, entirely psychological and feeling all the worse for it. He could feel phantom hands on him, yanking him straight, pulling him into position, forcing him to bend in a way that hurt and kept hurting until his body learned to ignore the pain and just glide with the pushes. He realized he had been quiet for too long, “A-anyways, I was a ballet dancer in studios and company until I quit. I was offered a contract to keep dancing if I wanted it, Molly was happy for me. Everyone was, I think.”

“You don’t seem so fond of it,” Alastor commented as Angel frowned. There was a short pause as Angel adjusted something on his laces. Fiddling with something until he pointed out his foot and felt satisfied with how it looked. Alastor clicked his tongue to get back his attention, Angel paused, frown deepening, and Alastor continued, “I might even say you hate it.”

“I hate it here!” A foreign voice said in Angel’s mind, he saw a familiar but old forgotten face in the mirror. “I hate you! I hate you! I hate it here!”

A sudden flash of phantom pain in his face, the harshness of a slap, and a cold flat statement, “Don’t think you can run from me.”

A phantom grip on his neck as he felt like he was being pulled back upright and on his feet, forced back to stand against a wall even as he felt the air in his lungs quickly slipping away, feeling desperation and fingers itching to claw back at the offensive grasp on his throat. “You will never get away from me.”

Blood boiled underneath his skin, years upon years of trauma and anger pecking towards the surface. Feelings of helplessness, being trapped, controlled, _pitiful-_

Angel visibly bristled, “I spent nearly twenty years trapped under her thumb, battling myself and her dreams-!”

The spider let out a heavy breath, turning his upper body out towards Alastor. Towards the audience, his audience. _Always be in sight, remain in focus_.

“When I quit ballet, I ran from home. I didn’t want her finding me, I didn’t tell nobody, not even my sister. I took the money I had saved up and took a train out and didn’t look back,” his eyes turned distant, as if in memory. That first taste of freedom still left shivers down his spine, a delightful chill to chase down the remaining tingles of residual anger. “I bounced around for a while. Didn’t really live anywhere, never stayed in one place,” he said, as he raised his right knee and then stretched out his leg towards the wall. “I got to make a new me, reinvent myself. I did whatever I wanted, it was fucking addicting.”

The spider demon slowly raised the leg higher over his waist as his feet jumped into stance, as he set his full weight onto his tiptoes, not even a hitch in his breath, eyes forward but still not quite in the present. “For the first time in my life, I really knew who I was and got to be myself. I did anythin’ I could get into and then some. It got me in hot water every now and again, but when you’re partying and hitting a new city every night, no one’s gotta know your story or why you’re chasin’ a high- You let some shit be and just let it happen when it happens.”

“I don’t suppose you’ll mind me asking then- what brought you down here?” Alastor crossed his hands over his lap, ever-present smile and eyes curious. “Nothing you’ve said so far seems like a good reason to send you to Hell.”

Angel’s left foot stuttered and his eyes suddenly came back into focus as he braced himself fully on his feet. His response was clipped. “I caught up to me.”

“Pardon?” Alastor cocked his head. Angel was looking in his direction but not seeing him. There was something immediately recognizable in his eyes; Alastor remembered it very well from his victims: _fear_.

“What did you do, cher?” Alastor asked, grin widening as Angel slowly brought his foot close and then raised his knee to begin the stretch again. But he was listening, he was shaking underneath his fur, he was seeing something in his head, and it was showing Alastor a form of fear so delicious that he could almost feel his mouth watering. “When did mother’s angel fall from grace?”

“I killed her.” He said quickly. “She found me. I was scared and I clubbed her over the head with a rum bottle until the hits felt soft.” He was reliving something horrible in that memory. “I killed my own mother.”

Alastor’s smile was gleeful, leaning forward from his seat, a part of him inwardly delighted in the fact that the both of them had murdered a parent. Granted, the red demon had killed his father for different reasons than Angel but nonetheless- to see how Angel was still in just as much shock and feelings of regret as if no time had passed. The red demon was sadistic, he wanted to hear the spider admit it, grin further widening as he continued to watch the other demon, “Do you regret it?”

“...I-“ Angel began, looking at himself in the mirror. He saw someone else in place of his reflection. Big brown eyes, still pale under tan skin, dark hair a mess with haphazard bleaching. Bloodstained cheeks, shaking hands still holding the rum bottle, chest heaving in the suit top a size too small. How they fell to their knees and soaked blood into the pants once-freshly cleaned from the wash. How his mother's body had laid on the floor for an hour while the person in his memory feverishly opened the rum bottle again, pulled gulp after gulp, coughed out the excess, all while crying through their broken laughter, babbling apologies and curses in Italian. Begging someone for forgiveness, begging someone else to wake up and scold them again, begging begging begging-

Always begging, never receiving.

Angel squared his shoulders, changing his foot stance and ignoring the itchiness behind his eyes. “No. No, I don’t. I’m better anyways.” _Liar_.

“And what did you do with the body?” Alastor asked, interest piquing. He held his head in one hand and slowly twirled his microphone stand with the other. “What of your neighbors? Surely there must have been a commotion.”

The spider paused, raising his upper arms above his head and crossing his lower arms over his waist in a loose position. He licked his lips, “Remember what I said before- never stayed in one place,” he said. Oh yeah, the neighbors had definitely heard but they had their own bullshit to deal with and hadn't been bothered to check in. Nevertheless, Angel hadn't taken any chances, continuing on, “I carried what I could and took the first ride out, rode an entire hour.”

The ride had been so long, agonizing, tormenting. He had changed but blood smells. Corpses smell. He had smelt of rum. But he had shoved large breasts and a crumbled ten dollar bill into the driver’s face and begged him to take him out of the city. _Take me somewhere else, anywhere but here_.

Angel had nearly fallen asleep but then the driver had jerked them to a stop, said they were over state lines and that he hoped Angel took care of himself. Angel remembered laughing it off. But it was just as dry as his throat after the rum and burned just as bad. He had watched that car drive away from the curb, suddenly felt the chill in the air, felt the cold dig into his bones and wished he hadn’t had to leave his previous city. His heart leapt into his throat, bile rising soon after and he threw up in a nearby gutter. He watched it sludge down the drain, wishing that he could slink away like that.

Angel came back to himself, blinking a few times to rid the wetness threatening to spill from his eyes. He was turning, brain catching up and realizing he was spinning on one foot, en pointe, while the other leg was crossed over his knee. Upper arms still raised above his head, lower arms clutching his middle a tad tighter than necessary.

The spider stopped turning, put himself back onto one flat foot and took a short breath, exhaled. “The new city- That’s when I got in trouble again. I just wanted a couple bucks to float me, but didn’t know I was on someone’s turf.” He felt more than saw himself grind his teeth in the mirror. “I took someone’s regular and she ran to her pimp. Got a black eye. Had to change strategies.”

“I see,” Alastor remarked, smile widening when Angel gave him a short dark glance for the pun. The elder chuckled, crossing his ankles. “What did you do next? What was your new plan?”

Lowering his upper arms, the spider looked at himself in the mirror again. Saw that gaunt face look back at him, saw how eagerly that old version of himself took the white powder offered to him. He had joined a new house, an apartment with other prostitutes. Cheap booze and spare drugs every night if he sang during the day and walked the streets at night. How he had started throwing up more often, woke up from three-day powder runs with new bruises and random cuts. The runs left gaps in his memory. His body hurt and he always had a headache while sobering up. Muscle soreness coupled with irritability, the awful paranoia of not knowing what had happened with his lost time, beating his head and fists against the wall when he was shorted on his drugs. But he couldn't go sober, not after the drugs made the visions go away. Not when the drugs were the only thing to keep him _sane_ , kept him _safe_.

Being sober was dangerous, Angel knew that very well, and tried to avoid it. He got a hit every chance he could and didn’t even blink when the other girls noticed he was taking bigger hits off the drugs. His head would always hurt, his heart beating rapidly as he took the offered spiked cigarette, still seeing his mother’s corpse in every dark corner. Sometimes she was sitting up, sometimes standing and leaning on a wall - but always there, lurking, waiting for him to see her in those dark moments. Kept seeing her blood on his hands even though he scrubbed until he was peeling skin, kept hallucinating and taking bigger hits off the cigarettes until he was too numb and fuzzed off to care. He couldn’t be sober, couldn’t go clean, he couldn’t face his fears. He never wanted to face her ever again, dead or alive.

“I tried moving in with some girlfriends I made while working.” Angel replied simply. “Safety in numbers, y’know?”

The other girls began noticing something was wrong, giving him odd glances when he murmured to himself, sometimes even avoiding him. The smallest girl but unofficial leader of the flat finally approached him as he was coming down from a run. It was his longest one yet, he had been high for almost four days - he had kept taking the powder until his stash was gone, kept whispering about awful things. Dark shadows moving in the corners. Sightings of his mother in the corner of his eyes, in the darker corners of the room, across the street at night in the dark spaces between lampposts. Waiting. Still bloody, beaten – and holding the very same rum bottle used to kill her. Her lips moved but Angel never heard her speak. He was scared to sleep, almost in tears as he saw her at the foot of his cramped bed, waiting, raindrops outside sounding like the blood dripping onto the floor. He dug his fingernails into his hands, into his arms, into his scalp – pain to distract from the horrific sight and wake him up from this nightmare. But when he opened his eyes, she was not only still there, but closer. Ever closer still.

When the small girl had come to Angel, she had been concerned. All the girls were, she had wanted to say that he was part of their family now and she wanted to be sure her family was okay. She had gently asked what was wrong, gently touched his shoulder and gently asked if he needed anything, warm brown eyes and dark skin, _you look down on your luck there, baby, do ya need some help_?

But Angel didn’t see gentle, he saw malice.

Angel didn’t see the little girl offering help, he saw his mother- face swollen and bloodied, teeth broken into her face and gums split open. One eye nearly swallowed whole by facial swelling, the other a gaping and gory mess, her neck bruised and bent oddly, leaving her head hanging wrong on her shoulders. Her usually primped hair unsettled and disorderly, blood staining her roots. She stood wrong, like her spine couldn’t remember how to hold itself upright anymore, she was missing one heeled shoe. She was always holding the rum bottle, the rest of her body loose but her grip on the bottleneck tight.

When that little girl was just trying to help, had put her hand on his shoulder, he had only seen his mother reel her hand back to strike him-

Angel came back to himself; he was spinning faster, still en pointe, back arched slightly as he bent backwards. One arm raised above his head, one at his collar, his lower arms grabbing his middle as he felt hollow within. He was bringing himself back up, adjusting his feet to tiptoe down a few paces to his left. Away from the audience, dance away. _Run away. Always running away_.

The spider saw that old face in the mirror again, face bloodied again. Gaze fiery and mouth moving in unintelligible yelling, hands then tangled in greasy hair as they fell to their knees and screamed wordlessly. Endlessly. Screamed themselves hoarse and nearly pulled chunks of hair loose. Long, long bare legs were bloody, shaking in withdrawal symptoms and new terror. There was another body at his feet, that little girl was crumbled in a heap of her own limbs, an odd knife jabbed in her throat, her tiny hands grabbing at the blood spilling through her fingers, garbled words and pleading eyes. Eyes that went dark so much faster than his mother’s, eyes that were so scared and so confused, only trying to help-

“More demons in that head of yours?” Alastor’s chuckle brought Angel back to the present. His gaze was knowing, his grin self-assured. Unrepentant. Unburdened by guilt.

Angel looked at him, thought of the stories he had heard of the elder demon’s sins, of his rampage in Hell. How Alastor could and would easily eliminate anyone in his way.

Angel lowered his upper set of arms, releasing his lower set to hang limply at his waist. He looked at himself in the mirror and said aloud, “Y’know how they say the first kill is the hardest?”

Alastor hummed to himself, eyes glinting as his grin was widening, “I have heard the saying, yes.”

“The next ones are different.” Angel crossed his feet, squaring his shoulders, as he brushed his hair from his face. He saw the old scars still left on the inside of his wrist. “The next ones are instinctual. You just act on it.”

Alastor leant back in his seat, “How many have met their end with you, ange de la mort?”

Angel looked at himself in the mirror. He silently counted in his head. The rum bottle, the odd knife, the countless broken needles and spiked drinks. The stray cord, that old brick left on the corner of James Street and Green Avenue, the handgun picked up in Charleston, the hatchet in Mobile, the shotgun robbed off a Good Samaritan in Jacksonville.

Angel turned to look at Alastor, who just kept grinning, but the spider’s gaze was even and his mouth almost numb as he said it, “I don’t know.”

:::

_When the acrobat fell off the beam_  
_She broke everyone's hearts_

**Author's Note:**

> finally back into writing after 3 years rip, thanks hazbin


End file.
